Yet again the pace of societal change in Ireland has moved up a gear. But let's not forget that these struggles have often been long and often hurtful and abusive.

This writer was a young reporter in the original 1983 campaign which gave us this abortion amendment to the constitution.

Happily, we have since learnt - with certain lapses and exceptions - to talk to one another respectfully and kindly about the difficult issue of abortion.

We are today witnessing the end of the "Irish solution to Irish problems".

This is definitely the biggest change in what former Church of Ireland Bishop, Dr Walton Empey, once called "Ireland's alternative Trinity" of divorce, contraception and abortion.

The prohibition on divorce was taken out of the Constitution by a tiny majority in November 1995 after an earlier vote in 1986 which was beaten by 2:1.

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It is all of 33 years ago since the then-Health Minister, Barry Desmond, instituted changes to allow the free availability of contraceptives.

Prior to that, the theory was that, if a man or woman had a certain urge, they required a marriage certificate and a doctor's prescription to get a packet of condoms.

That was a formula devised by a man called Charlie Haughey in the late 1970s when he was Health Minister and encapsulated in the dreaded "Irish solution ..." slogan.

Way back in 1988, Senator David Norris won a marathon case in the European Court of Human Rights ordering the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

Ireland accepted that ruling as they have contracted to accept all such rulings in principle under membership of the Council of Europe.

But every six months Ireland's ambassador to the Council of Europe had to appear at the headquarters in Strasbourg to explain why it was going to take more and more time to comply with the ruling. It took until 1993 for then Justice Minister, Máire Geoghegan Quinn, to enact legislation which ended the criminalisation of same-sex relations.